The French police raided an apartment in northern Paris suburb of Saint Dennis, where the suspected mastermind of last week's attacks was believed to have been hiding. The operation was launched early Wednesday morning at 4:15 am, and ended at 11:47 am. Two people died, and seven were arrested, while a police dog Diesel was killed.
One woman blew herself up with an explosive vest, and a man died after getting hit by projectiles and detonation of grenades. Five policemen were lightly wounded in the siege that lasted seven hours.
However, the police has not yet revealed if the main suspect behind planning the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was among those found at the apartment.
The police identified Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian citizen of Moroccan descent, as the mastermind behind the attacks which left 129 people dead, and injured about 300 others.
The New York Times reported that a cellphone found in a dustbin outside the Bataclan hall tipped the investigators on one of the locations the terrorists used to plan out the attack. The phone had a text message in French, which [when translated] read, "here we go, we're starting" or "we have left, we're starting."
"A lot of work was done as part of this investigation, which made it possible to obtain, through phone records, surveillance and testimony, elements that could have suggested that the man named Abaaoud was potentially in an apartment used for plotting in St.-Denis," Prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.
An international search operation is underway to find 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected to have been involved in the shootings. He fled to Brussels after the attacks. His brother Ibrahim was one of the seven militants who blew himself up in the Paris carnage.
The Islamic group claimed responsibility for the attacks and said that eight men carried out the operation, but a footage from the scene of one of the attacks showed that a ninth suspect could have also been involved.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve released a statement disclosing that in the 414 raids carried out in France over the last three days, about 75 weapons, including rocket launchers and other heavy weapons, long automatic firearms, and handguns were found.
About 60 people have been detained and another 118 put under house arrest.
The Belgian police has also charged two men, 21-year-old Hamza Attou, and 27-year-old Mohamed Amri, for having driven the militant Abdeslam from Paris to Brussels.
A US official said Abaaoud was a major player in an Islamic State external operations cell, tracked by the intelligence agencies for the last few months. Abaaoud had visited Syria multiple times, sneaking in and out of Europe undetected. Last fall, he was thought to have been killed in Syria, fighting for IS. But he was actually on his way back to Europe to meet with IS militants in Europe.
While coming back to the continent at the end of last year, his cellphone was tracked to Athens, Greece, but he was lost again from the intelligence radar, and came back to Belgium where his family stays.
He also appeared in an ISIS video, driving a tow-truck, while joking and dragging decapitated bodies tied on the back of the vehicle, to be dumped into mass graveyards.
"Of course, it is not joyous to make blood flow. But, from time to time, it is pleasant to see the blood of disbelievers," Abaaoud said in French on a video shot by the IS for the cause of recruitment of more militants.
French President Francois Hollande said that the country was now "at war" against IS terrorism, "What we need to do is to annihilate an army which is a threat to the entire world and not just some countries."
Hollande is scheduled to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow this month.
